last updated Wednesday, February 25, 2004

Meeting 14 (Nitration)

1. Referring to the nitration experiment, answer the following questions:

a. How do you generate the nitronium ion in the laboratory?

b. What is the function of the sulfuric acid in the experiment?

2. During the nitration step, explain why does the amount of the dinitro derivative increases with increase in temperature of the reaction mixture? How can you prevent this from happening?

3. a. Why is the nitronium ion is a much stronger electrophile than the acylium ion?

b. The nitrogen in NO₂ has more of a nucleophilic character than an electrophilic one. Why?

c. The following table shows the stretching frequency for various "NO₂" species. Explain the observed trend.